Stavros Stavrides

Short CV

Dr. Stavros Stavrides, architect and activist, is Professor of Architectural Design and Theory at the School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens Greece, where he teaches graduate courses on housing design (including social housing), as well as a postgraduate course on the meaning of metropolitan experience. He has published numerous articles on spatial theory. His books: The Symbolic Relation to Space (1990), Advertising and the Meaning of Space (1996), The Texture of Things (with E. Cotsou, 1996) From the City-Screen to the City-Stage (2002, National Book Award), Suspended Spaces of Alterity (2010), Towards the City of Thresholds (in English, 2010, in Spanish and Turkish2016) and Common Space (in English, 2016). His research is currently focused on forms of emancipating spatial practices and spaces of commoning.

What Does a Settlement’s Layout Show about the Society Which Inhabits it? On the Importance of Thinking-through-images in Space and Time in Mediterranean Prehistory, S. Souvatzi and A. Hadji (eds.), London: Routledge/Informa.

This research is focused on the reappraisal of the historically specific forms through which the relation between public and private spaces was treated in the design, construction and the inhabitation of the social housing complexes in Greece. Crucial for the reserach is the theoretical investigation of the meaning and the use of the terms public and private and the search for terms to describe intermediate relations conceptualizing "in-betweeness". The history and inhabiting experience of the Greek social housing complexes will be used for the development of theoretical tools which may be usefull in architecture and urban planning theory. 2009-2011

A series of video documentaries for Athenian neighborhoods based on the idea that each city part can be described and interpreted by a word connected to space (f.e. threshold, balcony, warehouse, basement, arcades etc) that retains both its literal meaning as well as a potential allegoric connotation (http://mikropoleis.tumblr.com/map).

Interviews - Conversations

A video produced by the team "aformi" which focuses on self governed occupied places in Athens and their characteristics as developed or created by the December uprising. Contains interviews of people participating in these initiatives as well as an interview of S. Stavrides on the meaning of public space and the right to the city (can be dowloaded in high resolution)

Also available in Greek http://www.rebelnet.gr/articles/view/On-the-Commons , Ukrainian http://commons.com.ua/archives/9759 and Rumanian http://www.criticatac.ro/19301/despre-bunurile-comune-interviu-cu-massimo-de-angelis-stavros-stavrides/

How does a global financial crisis permeate the spaces of the everyday in a city? Our final 35' documentary film traces the multiple transformations of crisis-ridden Athenian public space and those who traverse it.

The research project Infrastructures of Caring Citizenship, investigating the politics and spatiality of citizen-led initiatives of care, emerged in the urban contexts of Southern Europe in the wake of a still unfolding common crisis.http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucqbiig/index.html